Friday, December 19, 2014

"Christmas At Harrods - Part Two"

I have absolutely no aptitude for working with my hands, and
I had just taken a job wrapping toys at an upscale department store, an
assigment where the use of the hands is exclusively demanded.

I shudderingly recall my school experiences in “Manual
Training” where in “Leather Shop”, the bar for my objective was progressively
lowered from making a wallet to making a change purse to making an irregularly-shaped
eye patch.And even then, I required
help.

Now here I am, standing at a conveyor belt leading from
inside the Harrods Toy Department to
the dank and windowless storeroom that was our designated “Work Area” over
which rolled oversized, wire carrier baskets laden with upcoming gifts for the
holiday season.

The next wire that came through basket was yours.You lifted it off the conveyor belt, and you carried
it to your workstation, which was a bar-high, group table, equipped with a
heavy roll of Harrods-green wrapping
paper, a handful of “Cellotape” dispensers, a pair or scissors and a foot-round
ball of medium-strength string.

There, one by one, you dutifully gift-wrapped every present
in the basket.When you finished, you
returned all the now-wrapped presents to the basket, which you then directed to
the next stage of the operation,
which was either a delivery truck area (for local destinations) or the store’s downstairs
post office from which the purchased presents were airmailed overseas.

Finally, you took the completed “work order” receipt and you
skewered it onto the large, vertically projecting nail that every toy wrapper
was provided, the measure of your accomplishment being determined by the number
of receipts on your nail at the end of the day.You then returned to the conveyor belt for another basket.

That was the “Game Plan.”Here’s how it worked for me.

Badly.

I was a terrible gift wrapper.I wasted way too much Harrods wrapping paper, overdid it big-time on the Cellotape (three-inch wide Scotch tape that you peeled off a giant
dispenser), and my string-tying left a lot to be desired in the tightness
department.(You could lift my efforts
by their strings and the presents would fall completely out of them)

In my (at least partial) defense, the presents redirected to
the mailroom, I was informed, would be entirely unpacked down there and then specially
re-packed for overseas shipment.When I was criticized for my strings being
too loose, my inevitable response was,

“How tight do they have to be to make it all the way to the
basement?”

I was a terrible toy wrapper – Strike One.I had a questionable attitude – Strike
Two.And I was excruciatingly slow – Strike
Three.A not entirely apt analogy,
because, although it is traditionally “Three strikes and you’re out”, I was
inexplicably retained in the lineup and permitted an unlimited number of swings.

To some degree, a respectable “receipt count” was the luck
of the draw, your rate-of-speed depending substantially on how many items there
were in the next basket, and also – no small concern – what exactly those items
included.

Best-case Scenario:A
wire basket containing a single item, that item being a rectangular deck of
cards.Even I could have handled that one.In less than twenty minutes to boot!

On the other hand, if your next basket was stacked high with
gift purchases, or, more frighteningly, one
of those gift purchases was a tricycle…

How do you giftwrap a tricycle!

It takes forever!The handlebars.The wheels.The little step in the back.The bell.And why – you’ll love this! – was that tricycle not packed in the
regularly shaped cardboard box it originally arrived in?Because Harrods
– in their wisdom and inexplicable cheapness – had removed the tricycle from its
shipping container, which they subsequently tossed into the furnace to heat the building!

“Who are these
people who are ruining my life!”

I shall mention but one of them, as he was the only one with
whom I was in immediate contact.

That gentleman was my boss.

Imagine a squat, ruddy-faced fireplug from Glasgow, and
that’s who I’m talking about.A former
policemen, he was now managing a less than “type cast” assemblage wrapping
extravagant Christmas presents for overindulged rich kids.(A number of my colleagues were temporarily
furloughed longshoremen, whose suitability to this dissimilar arena was highly questionable.)

I dreaded this man coming around me.There would be no pep talk or bolstering
compliment, but instead, an always angry, indecipherable bluster.“Indecipherable” because, well… have you ever
tried to understand a person from Glasgow?

For ten weeks I was the regular target of his spittle-inflected
diatribes.And all that time, I had no
idea what he was saying to me.

(An inadequate representation of how distant his
pronouncements were from decipherable language.)

It was only through careful consideration – and more
importantly the proximate context – that I determined he was telling me that my
strings were too loose, and that I had to get more purchase receipts on my
nail.Not that that it hanged
anything.I was abominable at the job.